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samedi 30 juillet 2011

The ethiopian devil synth ?

Francis Falceto, the editor of the worldwide known and praised compilation "Les Ethiopiques", said in this 2005 interview ( http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/109 )

" We should speak first about Ethiopian production in Ethiopian nowadays, I mean in the past 20, 30 years. It is a pure disaster. It's the one-man band. A synthesizer playing all the lines. It's very cheap production. Many musicians are discouraged. "

(...)" I am a fan of the golden age of Ethiopian music, but I would like to see this music today very alive, not continuing what the veterans have done, but being still stronger than them, because this is the challenge. They don't have to imitate the older generation. They have to be better than them. But there is a lack of producers, a lack of arrangers. There is not any more arrangement. When you listen to the old recordings, the ones you find in Éthiopiques, if you listen to the horn lines, for instance, how intermingled, how sophisticated they are, how groovy it is—I don't see anything comparable nowadays. That's why I say it's very sad to see… It's not decadence. But it's a bit long to wait for a renaissance. It's now been 15 years since the new régime came. The musicians can express themselves. They can play the music that they want, produce what they want. Nothing seriously innovative has happened. I see nothing seriously innovative in the picture. Nothing. "

To galaxymydear: despite all the respect we have for him, I think none of us here will agree with this Falceto's way of thinking, according to all the cheap-synth related material that we regularly like to post.